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- Instead of the Chicago River emptying into Lake Michigan, pumping stations would funnel water from Lake Michigan through the canal, thereby flushing Chicago’s waste down river and toward the Des Plaines and Mississippi Rivers.
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Sep 9, 2022 · Description: The direction of the Chicago river has been reversed to prevent the pollution of Lake Michigan from the city’s sewage. The gigantic engineering project was a success, but at what cost? Here we focus on the reversal’s various environmental effects on the river’s ‘new downstream’. Listen here: 00:00. Transcript (provided by author):
Feb 18, 2020 · At the end of the nineteenth century, Edwin Oakes Jordan, a University of Chicago scientists and advocate of the Drainage Canal, insisted that self-purification would help Chicago solve its waste problem and improve public health.
Aug 27, 2021 · The new canal sent Chicago’s wastewater down the Mississippi River to the Gulf. Josh Mogerman, the national media director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that as a result of the reversal, Lake Michigan was free from pollution, and thousands of people were prevented from dying from many waterborne illnesses.[2]
From its earliest days, Chicago residents and businesses alike dumped their waste directly into the Chicago River, which flowed into Lake Michigan and contaminated the city’s drinking water. Chicago Stories explores the various methods tried to combat the problem, and one engineer’s bold solution.
In a herculean effort to save the city from the ravages of typhoid, cholera, and other waterborne illnesses, engineer Sylvester Chesbrough suggested Chicago reverse the direction of its river away from the lake and toward the Mississippi River.
Oct 13, 2019 · The influx of water from Lake Michigan nearly doubled the size of the Illinois River, eroding the banks and swallowing farmland and wildlife habitat up and down the valley, writes Richard Cahan...
The MWRD reversed the Chicago River in 1900 by constructing the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to take wastewater away from Lake Michigan to send downstream, thus protecting the source of the region’s drinking water.
